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Dude. This Shit's Actually Working…

Just a quick Chantix update. I’m almost done with Week 2, and I was despairing, because I still wanted to smoke. I made myself cut back a bit, but the cravings came on pretty strong, and I was all like, “Shit. My body isn’t going to let me be in that group that just loses interest, is it? It’s burning through this just like it does Demerol (and believe me when I say penchant for blowing through painkiller 5x faster than normal people sucks leper donkey dick when you’re dealing with kidney stones). We’ll have to treble the dose to get any result, and no doc in their right mind will ever do that. Wah!”

But I was able to cut back a bit, which until now had been unheard of.

And then came today. Aunty Flow arrived after I’d only gotten two hours of sleep, and this was one of those “Whee, let’s cause as much pain as possible!” cycles, so I decided fuck work and called out so I could lie about moaning all day. Normally, when I’m in acute pain, what I want are cigarettes and lots of them. Standing there smoking often helped the pain. This time? Nah. I took my ibuprofen, and settled in with Robert Ingersoll, and read for a couple of hours until the drugs kicked in. Then I napped. Then I woke up in more pain, as per usual, and popped more profen, and read some more, and finally in the very late afternoon decided that since I had a halfsie on the porch, I might as well go smoke it before it got too stale. Then I read for a while longer before I did so. And my brain didn’t do the “ZOMG nicotine!!!” dance. It did the, “Meh, that was alright, nothing special” thing.

This shit actually works. Even on people whose metabolisms burn through prescription drugs, alcohol and anything else in about 2.2 seconds. Even on people whose bodies seem to take a perverse pleasure in responding to medication in unexpected ways. I mean, I’m the person who can’t take NyQuil, because instead of sending me off to coma-land, it acts like a methamphetamine: jacked-up heart rate, paranoia, extreme wakefulness…

The dreams continue somewhat vivid. I had a fantastic one a few nights ago where I went up to Canada to blog about astronomers tracking an asteroid, and they caught me as I was taking pictures of the observatory. I thought I was going to get kicked out, being there unofficially, but they were delighted a layperson was so interested and invited me up to join them. They even let me play with the equipment, take lots of pictures for the blog, and gave me copious information on what and how they were doing. We enjoyed the intersection of geology and astronomy. And all was wonderful until I realized I’d crossed the border with my drivers license, not a passport, and wouldn’t be able to go back to the States, because our border guards are shits. Whoops! I briefly panicked until I realized Natalie and Jason would probably help me arrange couch surfing until I could get a passport arranged. That crisis sorted, I went back to enjoying science with the pros, and it was one of the greatest dreams ever.

I was the poster child for nicotine for 20+ years. After trying to bail on my own a few times, in 98 I tried it with Zyban. After a couple of false starts… it worked! I’ve been “sober” ever since.

Except [1]: Instead of cravings, twice in the first 6 or 8 months I had a dream where someone tricked me into a smoke. (No, I don’t know how you’d do that either, but that’s what happened.)

Except [2]: A little over a year ago I was helping my ex (who still smokes) deliver a litter of puppies. During a lull in the action she asked me to get her a smoke. I thought I’d be nice and light it up for her, and I did so, pretty much on muscle memory, which means… I took a drag off it. That noise was my head exploding. I used to do this 50 times a day?

I remember when I quit using Zyban years ago. I swore up and down it wasn’t working then somewhere around week 3 I was sitting in a restaurant having lunch, lit a smoke and it was – meh! not doing anything and tasting bloody awful. I left my lighter and cigs on the table and never looked back (except I crave them still and my wife smokes so there’s always temptation – but I won’t cave.